Awards

Branded Content & Entertainment: Use of Branded Content created for Digital or Social Media

Bronze Spike

Credits & Description

Client: Hindustan Unilever
Product: Brooke Bond Red Label Tea
Entrant: Mindshare Mumbai, India
Media: Mindshare Mumbai, India
Idea: Mindshare Mumbai, India
Editor: Jan 16 2016 12:00am
Leader South Asia - Team Unilever: Amin Lakhani (Mindshare-Fulcrum)
Senior Director-Inventions: Parama Bhattacharya (Mindshare-Fulcrum)
Director-Inventions: Sunny Rangwani (Mindshare-Fulcrum)
Principal Partner - Inventions: Ajay Mehta (Mindshare-Fulcrum)
Media Manager: Aditi Patil (Mindshare-Fulcrum)
Principal Partner - Client Leadership: Brajesh Dwivedi (Mindshare-Fulcrum)
Describe the campaign/entry:
India has an estimated 1.9 million transgender people. They are known in the country as hijras, and are stigmatised and alienated.
In 2015, India heard a different voice. The Transgender community was screaming for acceptance and legal recognition as they have been subjected to untold discrimination and abuse. Despite the Supreme Court ruling, society continue to shut its doors to them. They are left begging or resorting to prostitution to make ends meet, and find it impossible to get conventional jobs.
India has a rich culture of music and dance. If transgender people were to be accepted, we needed to get India to love and accept them on the biggest stage.
Our idea was to launch India’s first transgender pop group – The 6 Pack Band. By putting them in the limelight, we wanted to show that they are just like everyone else.
Creative Execution:
We launched 6 Music Videos over 6 months. Its debut song “Hum Hai Happy” based on Pharrell William’s hit “Happy” recounts their philosophy of being happy despite their adversities. We then roped in Sonu Nigam, India’s top Singer and musician par excellence and the most credible voice in the industry today and created 2 versions of ‘Sab Rab De Bande’, which translates to ‘We are all children of God’ reinforcing that all men are born equally.
Launched on Youtube, the songs quickly became a talking point across media. Leading television music and radio channels played them as programming content. They were also integrated into content sharing apps including all the Live-streaming music Mobile apps.
Leading Bollywood actors with like Hrithik Roshan, Salman Khan and Arjun Kapoor came forward to lend support by featuring in the music videos and Bollywood brigade went wild on Twitter showing their solidarity and support.
Brand consideration score touched 69%
• Our key metric, “Is a brand that makes the world a more welcoming place” touched 64%. (Source: Millward Brown)
• Brand penetration increased +400 base points.
• The videos garnered over 8mn views on Youtube with organic viewership >35%, (industry benchmark 11%).
• Campaign reached more than 25mn through various hashtags and brand handles.
• Videos garnered an engagement rate of > 2%, (industry benchmark 1.07%).
• Facebook page had an engagement score of 981 out of 1000, a first for the brand.
• UNAIDS, UN Women, the special causes of the UNO supported and recognized the cause.
• Komal Jagtap, 6 Pack Band Member: “After years of silence, my brother invited me home” and “The people who used to harass us on the street say, ‘that’s the star from 6 pack band’”
• GRAND PRIX Winner of the Cannes Glass Lion 2016.
A media first, we launched India’s first transgender band, the ‘6 Pack Band’ to bring alive Brooke Bond Red Label Tea’s ‘Breaking Barriers’ proposition. With the aim of ending the stigma surrounding them, we used media to
a) generate global awareness of the issue and the need for transgender integration
b) offered a solution by conceptualizing and popularizing the band
c) garnered support from the influencer (celebrity) community
d) We used popular culture to change popular culture using Media
In context to the campaign, Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook posted - ‘Marketing doesn’t just reflect Culture, it helps shape it’.
Insights, Strategy and the Idea:
Red Label Tea straddles housewives across socio-economic classes. This seemingly disparate target group has a common love for music. Music has the power to straddle socio economic classes and cultures.
The pieces fell into place. Red Label is about ‘Togetherness'; Transgenders are yearning to be together with society and society is unified by music. Our solution lay in creating content that would raise the issue & propagate the solution.
It was integral to the idea that the band released tracks about their philosophy of being happy despite the adversity they are subjected to. 6 Bespoke content pieces formed the campaign assets and were launched on YouTube. They sang about the importance of gender equality, reinforcing Red Label’s message of breaking down barriers. Without mocking the transgender, which is often the case in Bollywood, we reached a mass audience so that people can look at them differently and with more tolerance.